Help with google ranking on small site

First off let me introduce myself, my name is Curtis and I'm just trying to get things clear as I have noticed many different opinions on S.E.O. and what does and doesn't work. First off most of the sites I will deal with are small company sites. Such as home page, services, pricing, about us, contact, portfolio, possible blog. For companies such as plumbing construction things like that, So the site wont be changing all that much. My question would be how do I rank higher in Google. I have heard of and used senuke and others on a test site and got a bunch of crap backlinks, not even one of which was do follow. How and the heck can i get a jump start on getting do follow backlinks without paying someone. I have all the time to do it myself but it seems all the blogs and everything are always no follow and I'm just lost. senuke promises do follow but did not deliver. Also these will be for legit professional companies so I don't want spammy backlinks or anything that will hurt them. I'm willing to do the work but need almost a mentor of sort to walk me through the steps. If there is someone so kind out there that would be amazing. Basically I just want to help local business sites get more business when someone searches something like (City name) and then plumbing or like quality plumbing in xyz city. Obviously these site will have a Google places listing but I'm referring to ranking higher in the organic SITE listings. Where can one go to get quality do follow links manually not automated or link submit type site. One main problem is the sites are brand new and obviously not exposed and the companies are brand new as well so no customers to work off of for starters so these sites will be relying on there first customers from Google searches for businesses of there type. which would mean they are of course going to need a hefty arsenal of backlinks to give them any relevancy to Google. Thank you all for any help you can bring me I look forward to all the advice and hopefully a mentor if someone is so kind as to share they're tricks with me. Thank you in advance -Curtis